ARTICLEs

Looking Beyond the Victims: Descendants of the Perpetrators in Hitler’s Children

Liat Steir-Livny 2019

Hitler’s Children (Chanoch Ze’evi, 2011) is the first Israeli documentary dedicated to the topic of descendants of Nazis. This article analyzes the director’s cinematic and ethical choices in mediating a notably painful subject for Israeli audiences. It claims that the director’s emphasis on reconciliation and his focus on descendants who acknowledge and express remorse for their parents’ roles in the Holocaust set a cinematic tenor of confession and guilt. The similar perspectives shared by the five descendants interviewed for the film marginalize the conflictual and complex responses of descendants of perpetrators which have been revealed during studies on the familial legacy of Nazi criminals